“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die.”
Billy writing a letter to a newspaper describing the Tralfamadorians
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Context: The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Kurt Vonnegut 318
American writer 1922–2007Related quotes
“If no one knows when a person is going to die, how can we say he died prematurely?”
Source: When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
As quoted in Massoud's Smile https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBR8V8YWEAI9OWu?format=jpg, by Hiromi Nagakura
“The most important thing I learned in college about the rich is that they pursue hobbies”
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)
“The most important thing you do in your life is to die.”
